In reply to cb294:
For those who don't have facebook.
Quite thought provoking for looking at other companies too, I thought.
Are you disappointed? Do you think we are not taking responsibility for the environment and that our sustainability work is a joke. Maybe because we produce in Asia, that we recycle far away from home (in Asia) and that we transport goods from Asia. Here comes an explanation to the choices we make.
We are a small company with high ambitions, working within a flawed industrial system – the textile industry. Our goal is always to be at the forefront, pushing this system towards a more sustainable way of business. But these things take time and we need to put our best efforts where we have the most effect.
Regarding recycling; We cannot recycle fibres in our backyard in Sweden. There are very few existing alternatives. Today, most of the used polyester fibres are incinerated or put into landfill, which is really the last alternative for us. The Japanese “Eco-Circle” is the only actually working polyester recycling system today, where old fibres can be turned into new ones with almost no performance decrease. Within the next 5-10 years we are pretty sure there will be more initiatives available, closer to “home”. In the meantime, we need to find the best available solutions aiming at a “Circular Economy”. We are way too small to venture into the recycling and materials handling business to start our own process. We think that promoting initiatives that go in a “Circular Economy” direction is not short-sighted but rather aiming at a long-term vision. Even if the short-term benefits are not as high.
Production locations are chosen due to a number of factors. The biggest one, however, is finding a factory who actually can make our goods. In the mid 90’s, the textile industry closed down most of the more advanced sewing factories in Europe and moved production to China. We kept our production in Estonia for a couple of years more but had big problems with quality and deliveries, why a change was needed. At that time, the best quality offer came from a Chinese supplier. The price was higher than in Estonia, but we saw that the Klättermusen quality and innovation level could be kept there. 10 years from now, I am convinced that the European textile industry will resurrect due to our demand for more local production, but the biggest problem in this process is that there are no skilled textile workers in Europe anymore. In Sweden today, there is no education for industrial sewing at all. That is why the best competence for functional textile production is made in China, Taiwan or Vietnam today.
Transportation is a tricky question, often we tend to see the overseas shipping of finished goods as the big climate bandits of the world. However, the boat transportation from Shanghai port to Gothenburg port in Sweden is actually equal in contribution to carbon dioxide emissions (per garment) as the truck transport from Gothenburg to our offices in Åre. This is one reason why we moved our warehouse to a location very close to the port and also to our European market a couple of years ago. Of course we will be happy to promote the first solar and/or wind powered cargo vessel from Asia in the future, but until now they are just testing different technologies.
Believe it or not, but today we have half of our sales in Asia, the “local market” seen from a production standpoint. And also the most rapidly growing markets. So actually it makes more and more sense to keep production there and ship the smaller quantity to Europe.
At Klättermusen we get frustrated almost every day over the state of our industrial system, but we work really hard to push both suppliers, competitors and customers in a more sustainable direction through our decisions. You should of course not be happy with anything less than a sustainable world, but until that day comes we will keep working with that aim and continue giving you the real picture of our activities and the state of the industry, both the good and bad.
Post edited at 16:22
